Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Thalita Ferreira-Arruda, Nathaly R. Guerrero-Ramirez, Pierre Denelle, Patrick Weigelt, Michael Kleyer, Holger Kreft
Summary: The influence of island dynamics and characteristics on different facets of plant diversity, including functional and phylogenetic diversity, is explored using barrier islands. Island area is found to be the best predictor for all diversity facets. Larger islands have higher functional and phylogenetic diversity, while smaller islands have lower diversity. Habitat heterogeneity also affects diversity, with increased competition on smaller islands leading to potential trade-offs between area and heterogeneity.
Article
Ecology
Thomas J. Matthews, Joseph P. Wayman, Robert J. Whittaker, Pedro Cardoso, Julian P. Hume, Ferran Sayol, Konstantinos Proios, Thomas E. Martin, Benjamin Baiser, Paulo A. V. Borges, Yasuhiro Kubota, Luiz dos Anjos, Joseph A. Tobias, Filipa C. Soares, Xingfeng Si, Ping Ding, Chase D. Mendenhall, Yong Chee Keita Sin, Frank E. Rheindt, Kostas A. Triantis, Francois Guilhaumon, David M. Watson, Lluis Brotons, Corrado Battisti, Osanna Chu, Francois Rigal
Summary: Research on island species-area relationships (ISAR) has expanded to incorporate functional (IFDAR) and phylogenetic (IPDAR) diversity. However, we lack comprehensive global analyses of how these categories of island diversity-area relationship (IDAR) vary. In this study, we provide the first comparative evaluation of IDARs at the global scale using avian data sets from 51 archipelagos. Our results show that increasing richness with area drives the non-richness corrected IPDAR and IFDAR. We also find that archipelagos with steeper ISARs have larger differences in slope between IDARs, indicating increased redundancy on larger islands in these archipelagos.
Article
Ecology
Ana Filipa Palmeirim, Fabio Z. Farneda, Marcus Vinicius Vieira, Carlos A. Peres
Summary: Despite being a primary driver of habitat loss and insular fragmentation, the impacts of hydropower development on species identity and their functional and phylogenetic roles have often been overlooked. Through an integrative approach, it was found that the functional and phylogenetic diversities of small mammals and lizards mirrored taxonomic diversity and increased with forest area. To maintain ecosystem integrity, creating myriad small islands over large expanses of floodwaters in future hydropower development should be avoided.
Article
Biology
Julian Schrader, Ian J. Wright, Holger Kreft, Mark Westoby
Summary: Island biogeography focuses on the distribution of species on islands and isolated habitats, with five key processes shaping island diversity. The classical approach emphasizes species richness as the outcome, but functional traits can provide new insights into species colonization and persistence on islands. These traits are influenced by dispersal, establishment, extinction, evolutionary pathways, and ecological interactions, contributing to the unique characteristics of island species.
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Luisa Conti, Francisco E. Mendez-Castro, Milan Chytry, Lars Gotzenberger, Michal Hajek, Michal Horsak, Borja Jimenez-Alfaro, Jitka Klimesova, David Zeleny, Gianluigi Ottaviani
Summary: Insularity can affect the persistence of plant species in edaphic island systems, promoting enhanced persistence strategies and reducing functional diversity, thus helping species avoid or delay local extinction.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2022)
Article
Forestry
Deyi Yin, Qing Ye, Marc W. Cadotte
Summary: The study evaluated the impact of habitat loss on plant species in a subtropical forest using four spatial point process models, finding that the combined effects of habitat filtering and dispersal limitation were the most important factors. Additionally, phylogenetic and functional diversity were less sensitive to habitat area loss, while species richness declined more gradually under random habitat removal.
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Martha Paola Barajas Barbosa, Dylan Craven, Patrick Weigelt, Pierre Denelle, Rudiger Otto, Sandra Diaz, Jonathan Price, Jose Maria Fernandez-Palacios, Holger Kreft
Summary: Oceanic island floras are known for their unique morphological characteristics and provide examples of trait evolution. These morphological shifts are believed to be influenced by the biogeographical processes and evolutionary histories of oceanic islands. However, the mechanisms behind the distribution and diversity of plant functional traits remain unclear.
Article
Forestry
Lamei Jiang, Abudoukeremujiang Zayit, Kunduz Sattar, Shiyun Wang, Xuemin He, Dong Hu, Hengfang Wang, Jianjun Yang
Summary: This study compared functional diversity among riverbank, transition zone, and desert margin communities in the desert ecosystem of the Ebinur Lake basin in Xinjiang. It analyzed the effects of intraspecific and interspecific trait variation on functional diversity and found that intraspecific trait variation can increase functional richness and differences in functional traits between species, but its effects on functional diversity differ among communities and scales. Spatial factors mainly influenced functional diversity at smaller scales, while environmental factors were influential at larger scales. Considering intraspecific trait variation can reduce the measured effect of dispersal on functional diversity.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Flavia A. Montano-Centellas, Bette A. Loiselle, Morgan W. Tingley
Summary: The study found that abiotic filtering signals mainly drive montane biological assemblages to cluster towards higher elevations, while limiting similarity signals are weaker, resulting in few overdispersed assemblages at lower elevations. The decrease in species richness with increasing elevation is explained by temperature, while trait and phylogenetic dispersion are influenced by both temperature and vegetation structure.
Article
Plant Sciences
Jie Zheng, Muhammad Arif, Xinrui He, Dongdong Ding, Songlin Zhang, Xilu Ni, Changxiao Li
Summary: This study investigates the influences of different ecological processes on herbaceous and woody community assembly and their response to environmental drivers and elevational gradients in arid and semi-arid mountainous regions. The findings reveal that herbaceous and woody plants exhibit different adaptation strategies to climate factors, leading to decoupled responses along elevational gradients.
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Matias Arim, Veronica Pinelli, Lucia Rodriguez-Tricot, Esteban Ortiz, Mariana Illarze, Cesar Fagundez-Pachon, Ana I. Borthagaray
Summary: Biodiversity arises from niche mechanisms, where traits determine species performance and populations drift due to the stochasticity of community assembly processes. Small and isolated communities are more prone to stochastic assemblages, while larger and connected communities foster stochasticity through functional redundancy and random recruitment. These contradictory expectations require empirical analyses.
JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Julian Schrader, Mark Westoby, Ian J. Wright, Holger Kreft
Summary: Species diversity on islands generally increases with island area. Traits of woody plants, such as tree height, wood density, leaf nitrogen concentration and chlorophyll content, are mainly affected by basal area, which in turn is influenced by both island area and soil depth. Seed and fruit mass variations among islands are explained by a combination of basal area, island area, and isolation.
JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Chengye Hu, Yongtian Liu, Xiaolong Yang, Bonian Shui, Xiumei Zhang, Jing Wang
Summary: The effects of habitat heterogeneity on the functional trait composition and diversity of seagrass bed macrobenthos vary among different microhabitats, influenced by environmental parameters such as total organic carbon, organic matter, and grain size.
MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Kimberly A. With, Alison R. Payne
Summary: The study tested the habitat amount hypothesis (HAH) in an experimental system and found that local species richness is mainly influenced by the amount of habitat in the surrounding landscape rather than local patch size or habitat configuration.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Anna M. Csergo, Kevin Healy, Darren P. O'Connell, Maude E. A. Baudraz, David J. Kelly, Fionn O. Marcaigh, Annabel L. Smith, Jesus Villellas, Cian White, Qiang Yang, Yvonne M. Buckley
Summary: Spatial isolation is a significant driver of variability in traits and genotypes worldwide, and the effects of isolation vary between marine islands and mainland populations. Phenotypic differentiation is higher between marine islands, while spatial patterns of neutral genetic diversity show no consistent differences between the two systems. Geographic distance has comparatively weak effects on the spatial patterns of phenotypes and neutral genetic diversity.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Jiajia Liu, Ferry Slik, Shilu Zheng, David B. Lindenmayer
Summary: The extinction risk of newly described species has significantly increased over time, with the proportion of threatened species rising from 11.9% to 30.0% in the past decade. Projections suggest that this percentage could further increase to 47.1% by 2050. This pattern is consistent across vertebrate taxonomic groups and biomes, indicating that current estimates of species extinction rates are likely to be underestimated. Intensive fieldwork to discover new species and immediate conservation action, particularly in tropical areas, is urgently needed.
CONSERVATION LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Shilu Zheng, Raphael K. Didham, Mingjian Yu, Bruce L. Webber
Summary: Altered microclimatic conditions and higher disturbance at forest edges modify resource gradients and create environmental stress, leading to changes in selection pressures acting on individuals. While community-weighted trait-mean (CWM) shifts have been widely documented at the species level, it is unclear how edge effects act at the individual level and whether intraspecific trait shifts mirror CWM shifts. This study found that different leaf traits exhibited contrasting shifts in inter- and intraspecific trait variation in response to edge effects, with negative covariance dampening community-wide trends and positive covariance reinforcing them.
Article
Forestry
Tianxiang Li, Xue Li, Chuping Wu, Yuping Zhong, Mingjian Yu, Jinliang Liu
Summary: In fragmented forests, both biotic and abiotic factors play a role in plant community establishment. Excluding seed predation and herbivory can significantly increase seedling survival in the initial stages of seed germination and early seedling establishment.
Article
Forestry
Yidan Yang, Yanli Ji, Yunquan Wang, Jiajie Xie, Yi Jin, Xiangcheng Mi, Mingjian Yu, Haibao Ren, Keping Ma, Jianhua Chen
Summary: As global climate change continues, extreme climatic events are predicted to increase in frequency and magnitude. In this study, we analyzed the population dynamics and spatial pattern of dead individuals for several dominant species in a subtropical forest before and after a significant winter storm. Our findings show that the population dynamics of dominant species were significantly altered following the storm, but the extent of the changes varied with species. Analyzing the dominant species of a community contributes to a better understanding of the biological response of forest ecosystems in the face of extreme climatic events.
Article
Forestry
Changchun Jiang, Jiaqin Fu, Yunquan Wang, Pengtao Chai, Yidan Yang, Xiangcheng Mi, Mingjian Yu, Keping Ma, Jianhua Chen
Summary: Interspecific associations play an important role in species distribution, community assembly, and responses to environmental changes. The strength and direction of these associations can vary with environmental gradients and research scales. In subtropical forests, the associations between species are influenced by both habitat types and research scales.
Article
Plant Sciences
Boliang Wei, Lei Zhong, Jinliang Liu, Fangdong Zheng, Yi Jin, Yuchu Xie, Zupei Lei, Guochun Shen, Mingjian Yu
Summary: This study found that ectomycorrhizal (EcM) and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) tree species suffer from stronger conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) at certain growth stages, while EcM tree species can promote the growth of AM and ericoid mycorrhizal (ErM) tree species. Additionally, manipulating the basal area ratio of EcM to AM tree species is crucial for maintaining biodiversity and increasing forest carbon sink rates.
Article
Agronomy
Yawen Lu, Shilu Zheng, Kyle W. Tomlinson, Jiajia Liu
Summary: Plant herbivory and disease, which are essential for biodiversity and ecosystem function, are influenced by different processes and have different relationships in fragmented landscapes. We conducted a survey on 2,027 adult trees in 30 sites of 17 forest fragments in Xishuangbanna, China, and found that herbivory and disease were influenced by local and landscape environmental variables.
Article
Ecology
Shilu Zheng, Juntao Hu, Zhijun Ma, David Lindenmayer, Jiajia Liu
Summary: The authors used body size data from mammal and bird museum collections in North America to show that intraspecific variation in body size has increased over time, while mean body size has not changed. Previous studies have mainly focused on the declining average body size of animals, and less is known about long-term changes in intraspecific trait variation, which is crucial for understanding species' ability to cope with environmental challenges.
NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Qianyu Chen, Shilu Zheng, Jiajia Liu
Summary: The acceleration of new species discoveries is crucial for biodiversity conservation worldwide. Previous studies have focused on models including all known species to predict species discoveries. However, recent research suggests that species attributes have lower predictive power in predicting the discovery of more recently described species.
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Aiying Zhang, Marc W. W. Cadotte, Donghao Wu, Mingjian Yu
Summary: By studying the functional traits and phylogeny of woody plant communities, this research explores the impacts of environmental filtering and competitive exclusion on community assembly processes. The results show that smaller islands with limited resources experience more intense competition, resulting in a less clustered distribution of functional traits and phylogeny. On larger islands, both environmental filtering and competitive exclusion processes were observed.
Article
Forestry
Jing Guo, Xiaofei Gong, Shuisheng Yu, Boliang Wei, Liying Chu, Jinliang Liu, Xiaoyong He, Mingjian Yu
Summary: This study investigates the response of soil microbial diversity to pine wilt disease (PWD) and associated management practices. It finds that both bacteria and fungi diversity decrease after a 5-year PWD and logging, with varied responses depending on the location. The diversity of rhizosphere fungi is significantly impacted by the disease and logging, while the abundance of bacterial functional groups involved in carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism increases.
Article
Plant Sciences
Jing Guo, Boliang Wei, Jinliang Liu, David M. Eissenstat, Shuisheng Yu, Xiaofei Gong, Jianguo Wu, Xiaoyong He, Mingjian Yu
Summary: Plant species identity influences soil microbial communities directly by host specificity and root exudates, and indirectly by changing soil properties. The dominance of tree species and ectomycorrhizal woody plant species accounts for more of the variation among microbial communities than pine dominance alone. These findings indicate strong linkages between woody plant composition than soil microbial diversity.
Article
Soil Science
Donghao Wu, Sebastian Seibold, Katherina A. Pietsch, M. D. Farnon Ellwood, Mingjian Yu
Summary: Empirical evidence for the positive relationship between tree species richness and wood decomposition is weak, and tree species identity strongly affects decomposition rates by altering soil communities and micro-environments. The study found that tree species richness promotes spatial variation in wood decomposition rates by enhancing environmental heterogeneity.
SOIL BIOLOGY & BIOCHEMISTRY
(2023)
Article
Forestry
Jinliang Liu, Weiyong Liu, Jianbin Wu, Boliang Wei, Jing Guo, Lei Zhong, Mingjian Yu
Summary: Pine wilt disease caused by the Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is a serious biological invasion in East Asia. The retention of infected trees can help maintain soil fertility, increase plant species diversity and sapling biomass, and preserve ecosystem functions.